Struggling with Digestive Issues?
If you are among the seventy million people in the US struggling with digestive issues, know that there is help. Real help. What that means is assistance that doesn’t entail drugs that only mask the problem. Chinese medicine can help with everything from GERD and colitis, to Reflux, constipation and diarrhea.
When we are experiencing digestive discomfort this can easily disrupt sleep. Placing tiny filiform pins into pre-mapped sections of the body has the effect of rebalancing the body.
Digestive issues are often the result of emotional upset—anxiety, stress included—that throws off the body. This means the brain’s agitated state is messing with a digestive system that perhaps is already compromised. Typically we relax the agitated state (liver) and strengthen the ‘spleen’, thereby relaxing the gut.
Improve your sleep with these foods:
Healthy Fats–such as coconut oil, organic and pasture-raised meats, eggs, avocado, and butter all help provide your body with the necessary building blocks to manufacture sleep hormones. Be aware that coconut oil can also act as a stimulant for some people, so its use needs to be monitored.
High Antioxidant Foods are important for hormone production and removal of toxins that can impede sleep. Focus on leafy vegetables, high-nutrient fruits, and herbal or green teas (green tea early in the day only, as it contains caffeine).
Quality Proteins, especially at dinner: For your best shot at sleep, it is best to stop eating at least 4 hours before bedtime, and preferably by 6 p.m. every night. Your evening meal should include proteins, vegetables, and healthy fats. Cut back on carbohydrates. Eating enough protein at this meal will help prepare the body to enter the sleep cycle.
While going to bed hungry isn’t advisable (who can sleep with all that gurgling!) eating too close to bedtime is also not advisable, as it can make you feel bloated or create other stomach discomforts.
These Foods Can Help You Drift Off.
⋅ Cherry juice—contains melatonin. The tart form is best for sleep.
⋅ Milk–works well warm or cold. The fresh Tryptophan in it helps.
⋅ Jasmine rice (or a carbohydrate with a high glycemic index) metabolizes slowly. This helps your body not work so hard and perhaps get your mind to a state of calmness.
⋅ Natural complex carbs. Including cereal (low sugar content), barley, quinoa, buckwheat, or yogurt (plain with a little fruit and honey). Some will argue that no carbs or yogurt are good near bedtime. I tend to agree with that (i.e., yogurt tends to have a lot of sugar in it), but there are exceptions.
⋅ Bananas—contain calcium and magnesium; both promote sleep.
⋅ Turkey–think Thanksgiving snooze. Again, it’s the Tryptophan.
⋅ Sweet potatoes (yams)–a complex-carb superfood that contains sleep-promoting, muscle-relaxing potassium. Other potassium-rich foods include regular potatoes with the skin on, lima beans, papaya, and, of course, bananas.
